NORTH BILLERICA, MA — BTU International has relocated its Southeast Asia headquarters to an expanded site in Singapore.

The new facility includes a state-of-the-art demo and training facility, comprehensive spare parts inventory, conference rooms, and increased office space to support BTU’s continuing growth in Southeast Asia.

At the opening ceremony, on Dec. 4, Boris Mathiszik, BTU’s director of sales for Asia Pacific, said, “We are very excited about our move and our resulting ability to better support our growing customer base in the region. With our branch office in Penang, Malaysia, and our Southeast Asia headquarters here in Singapore, we are able to provide our customers unmatched service and support capability.”

The new office address is:

 BTU Overseas, Ltd

No. 9 Kaki Bukit Road 1

#02-10 Eunos Technolink

Singapore 415938

Tel : 65-67414567

PHOENIX – Anoraks with printed heating elements. LEDs, non-emitting displays, photovoltaics on rigid substrates. Low-weight, high-rel military applications. These were just some of the uses of printed electronics displayed and discussed at IDTechEx’s annual Printed Electronics USA in December. More than 300 delegates attended this year's event, which was characterized by demonstrations of market-ready products. Three U.S. military talks illustrated how this sector is still advancing faster than most. Here the objective of reducing the weight of a soldier’s pack by two-thirds was just as important as multipurpose items, such as the tent that doubles as an antenna and photovoltaic power supply. T-Ink demonstrated new applications of existing printed technology such as batteries, sensors, buttons and lights. Flexible OLEDs, as displays, signage or lighting, now look 10 years away, but electrophoretics are already here with flexible versions coming much sooner. Some pundits are forecasting printed flexible OLEDs at low volumes for the next few years, but flexible electrophoretics volumes are predicted to be much higher. Many forms of photovoltaics now look launchable in 2007. Printed thin film transistor circuits remain a year away, but many working samples were displayed. Most agree that a high percentage of printed electronics applications in the next few years will be from applications created from new markets. Some in printed conductors are considering developing semiconductors. Others hope to replace indium tin oxide semi-transparent electrodes in OLEDs, AC electroluminescent displays and so on. Here progress is slow, but HC Starck is a leader. Conductive plastics with better than resistor-like performance are still elusive. However, these problems are all seen as commercial opportunities. Giants of the chemical, plastics, printing, packaging and electronics industries were all present to see how they could participate in this new industry, with its potential for hundreds of billions of dollars annually, dwarfing the success of the silicon chip.
 

BANNOCKBURN, IL -- The IPC today will announce plans to produce an electronics assembly trade show outside Chicago next fall.

The show will take place the week of September 24, 2007, in Schaumburg, IL, a Chicago suburb. It is backed by the SMEMA Council, a group of major assembly equipment OEMs and an adjunct of IPC. The official name of the show is the IPC Midwest Conference & Exhibition, although some are casually referring to it as Apex Midwest.

Read more ...

TOKYO – Global sales of ICs rose 11.3% to $261.4 billion in 2006, driven by demand for DRAM memory chips and devices used in mobile phones, research firm Gartner said. Intel remained the market leader, with sales of $31.3 billion, good for a 12% share. However, the chipmaker’s revenue fell 9.5% year-over-year. Samsung Electronics expanded its share to 7.9% this year, as sales increased 12.4% to $20.6 billion. Said Jeremey Donovan, research director at Gartner, "Outside of DRAM, wireless semiconductor sales once again drove strong performance in the industry." Third place Texas Instruments’ sales jumped 17.4% to $11.9 billion, or 4.5% market share, Gartner said. Infineon Technologies jumped to fourth from seventh last year, growing 29% to $10.6 billion. Toshiba fell to fifth from fourth despite an increase in sales of 9.9%, to $9.9 billion.